WiseTech to Charge Separately for CargoWise AI Agents

WiseTech Plans to Charge Separately for CargoWise AI Agents

A Citi research note dated 1 October 2026 revealed that WiseTech plans to charge separately for CargoWise AI agents, according to Citi, raising questions over what customers can expect their existing Value Packs (CVP) to cover. The Loadstar reported the story on 8 October 2026, and it matters well beyond the forwarding community that actually licenses CargoWise. If your freight forwarder runs on CargoWise, which a lot of them do, this is the next line item heading toward your invoice.

WiseTech's CEO Zubin Appoo didn't deny the plan when The Loadstar asked him directly. Instead he drew a line around what's covered today: "Six powerful agentic capabilities are currently available to customers through CargoWise Value Packs", he said, while leaving pricing for more advanced agent features open. Everything beyond those six is apparently fair game for a future charge.

Why This Matters Even If You've Never Logged Into CargoWise

CargoWise is forwarder and customs-broker software. As a shipper, you almost certainly never signed a contract with WiseTech. But the scale of adoption on the forwarder side means you're exposed anyway. According to Bernstein, 13 of the top 25 global forwarders now run on WiseTech's CargoWise One, including DSV, DHL, Ceva Logistics, Sinotrans, and Nippon Express. If any of those names appear on your carrier panel, and for most European shippers with meaningful freight spend, at least one of them does, you're already touching CargoWise economics whether you know it or not.

This isn't WiseTech's first pricing shake-up in the past twelve months, and it won't be the last. The company has been explicit that AI is the strategic center of gravity for CargoWise going forward, embedding it into the workflow engine rather than selling it as a bolt-on. For shippers, the practical takeaway is simple: every time WiseTech adds a capability, there's a real chance it eventually shows up as a cost, and increasingly, that cost lands on your invoice rather than your forwarder's P&L.

The Fee That's Already On Your Invoice

Before worrying about AI agent fees that haven't launched yet, check whether you're already paying for the Value Pack model that's been live for almost a year. Here's the timeline:

The mechanics behind this are worth understanding before your next invoice audit. The CargoWise automation fee is the per job Value Pack charge that CargoWise adds to your customer's invoice by default as a disbursement line, and the pricing itself isn't hidden: CargoWise charges a published fee per job, from $2.63 to $19.95 per forwarding shipment and $3.28 or $9.95 per stand-alone customs procedure. Run that across a few thousand annual shipments and it stops being a rounding error.

What European Shippers Need to Do Differently, and By When

The fix here isn't complicated, but it does need to happen before your 2027 tenders lock in another year of ambiguity.

• This month: pull your last three forwarder invoices and look for a line labeled "CargoWise Automation Fee" or similar automation and technology disbursement. If your forwarder is DSV, DHL, Ceva, Sinotrans, or Nippon Express, start there.
• This month: ask your forwarder directly whether they're on CVP and whether pass-through is switched on. WiseTech's own position is that the fee is "one of the smallest disbursements on the shipper's invoice" and that recovering it is "entirely up to the forwarder". That means it's negotiable, not automatic. Push back on it.
• Before Q1 2027: add a clause to new RFPs requiring forwarders to disclose any software pass-through charges, including future AI agent fees, as a named, capped line item rather than an undisclosed disbursement.
• Ongoing: flag this in your freight audit and benchmarking process so technology surcharges don't quietly distort carrier-to-carrier rate comparisons during tender evaluation.

The Bigger Lesson On Who Controls Your Transport Tech Stack

This is what happens when the TMS layer sits inside your forwarder's software rather than under your own control. You end up negotiating rates with the forwarder while a third party sets the technology cost structure underneath, and you only find out after the invoice lands.

Enterprise shipper-side TMS platforms like MercuryGate, Descartes, Blue Yonder, Oracle TM, and SAP TM put the contract, and the fee structure, directly in your hands rather than your forwarder's. The same logic applies to multi-carrier connectivity platforms built for shippers rather than forwarders, including project44, Transporeon, nShift, and Cargoson, where you hold the direct relationship with your carrier base and control which charges apply, rather than inheriting whatever pricing model your forwarder's software vendor decides to roll out next.

Quick-Reference Checklist

• Audit your last three forwarder invoices for CargoWise Automation Fee line items (this month)
• Ask each CargoWise-running forwarder whether CVP pass-through is active on your account (this month)
• Add a software pass-through disclosure clause to 2027 tender documents (before Q1 2027)
• Watch for the AI agent fee rollout and get pricing confirmation in writing before it hits an invoice (through 2027)